Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 2 Number 3, December 2001
_______________________________________________________________
Particularities and Universals, Ethics and Aesthetics –
How
Art Can Lead to Spiritual Experience
I.
The Thought Forms of Dialogue and Understanding
Interdisciplinary,
intercultural and interreligious dialogue always means to talk about
particularities and universals. All the more so, if we deal with questions of
ethics, aesthetics and spirituality, trying to avoid any essentialist
statements, which can only be agreed upon –if at all- by a community sharing
the same faiths and confessions. But it is unavoidable to at least try to
communicate ethical, aesthetic and spiritual world views to the Other, if we aim
at a common understanding of world and society in late modern times and times of
growing globalisation – and if we aim at developing common concepts and at
least minimal standards of ethics and aesthetics. As a philosopher of religion,
my contribution for the time being is, to show how on the one hand,
interreligious dialogue and dialogue with religions in general is a necessary
pre-requisition for a common ethics and aesthetics –for understanding the
Others ethics and aesthetics at least- and on the other hand show, how art can
lead –and maybe is the best starting point for- spiritual experiences.
Of
course all understanding is rooted to a certain extent in discourse; no dialogue
and hermeneutics is possible without language (not denying non verbal forms of
hermeneutics, but concentrating on the language aspect of it here for the sake
of starting the written, i.e. verbal, argument). Let me therefore at this point
say a few words about thought forms which influence and vice verse are
influenced by language and language theory as a sub discipline of hermeneutics,
about new concepts of language as one product of new scientific insights and
insights into scientific methodology in modern 20th century science,
showing, that even the new insights of natural sciences shape our world view and
ways of perception.
*The
thought form of formal logic contents per definitionem universal rules, which
should be true/valid in all thinkable worlds and cannot be proved empirically;
the realm of application however can be discussed. This logic works with the
axioms of identity, contradiction and exclusion of the third. A further
condition for practical applicability is, that those elements for which the
logic should be applied, are intrinsically independent of each other and –if
given- only connected by ”outer” relations. The temporal consistency of the
elements is presupposed as well. Operations are reversible and can be repeated
as often as wished. It is important to also be aware of the boundaries of their
application. This thought form/logic however is rooted in the logic and
philosophy of enlightenment (Kant’s critical idealism) based on Newton’s
physics and is far away from chaos theory for example and its new non-causal
logic, or quantum theory, at least on a micro level. It’s presuppositions
are not given for biological, psychological and social processes and
events. Artificial intelligence for example is still not as developed as some
would wish, since it is built upon formal logic. But human logic and the logic
of human art for example and human ethics, is ”fuzzy”, not black-and-white.
Many events in human life are not reversible.
*The
thought form of dialectics (in theology cf Barth and Kierkegaard for a twofold
logic) is especially important for the individual and development of society.
From Being and Non-Being, through dialectical Becoming, new Being and new
Non-Being develop. Dialectic pairs as Being and Non-Being constitute each other,
a double negation does not lead back to the starting point, but to a new
temporary balance (Parmenides, Hegel). As far as self consciousness is
concerned, what is contradictory for formal logic, namely identity and
difference, can be seen as One from the point of view of self consciousness,
when the ”higher” self consciousness recognises the unity between
questioning subject with its unique identity (and ”lower” self
consciousness) and questioned ”object” (namely the same person and her self
consciousness). Unsolved however stays the question of causality: was there
first self consciousness or the discovery of the self?
For
Piaget the development of the thought form of formal logic can be understood
through assimilation and accommodation, although it is a weaker form of
dialectic (not really contradictory). A person develops within the dialectic of
devotion and approbation, from a reciprocity of world and self.
*The
complementary thought form helps to coordinate different theories of one fact,
when those theories are partial and concurrent, categorically different and not
possible to be reduced one to another. Within each internal perspective they
give a sufficient presentation, but are necessary altogether for a sufficient
explanation. The complementary thought form owes its logic not the least to
quantum theory and the end of strong causality on the micro level (not to be
mixed up though with determined, non causal chaos). Knowing, that results depend
on the experience’s setting and the inseparability of certain events: the term
”not compatible” is introduced for statements which are true in different
contexts. For this thought form again the ”tertium datur” exists. Contrary
to the dialectical thought form ”contradictory” statements do not constitute
each other, but with respect to a third (for example representation or
perception). Strong complementarity means that different ”statements” apply
in different moments and all other conditions for complementarity are given.
Nipkow therefore suggests, to use post formal, dialectical paradoxical and
complimentary thought forms in the case of religious/faith crisis and conflict.
We may add: in the case of interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue.
*The
graduating i.e. subdividing thought form has its roots –strictly speaking-
from a theory of quantities with blurred edges. Human beings are judging with a
somewhat ”blurred” scale (never – seldom – sometimes – often –
always). And this ”fuzzy” logic is an alternative to dichotomies and
dualism.
*Meta
cognition is a persons knowledge about her own cognitive acts and about those of
others. It is also (after Fredi P. Blüchel) controlling and watching those
processes (for example in the case of learning strategies). The question here is
how at all perception, recognition, argumentation and judging come about in our
brain. Procedural meta-cognition co-ordinates the different thought processes,
conceptual meta-cognition concerns the declarative knowledge about cognitive
proceedings. Constructive meta-cognition deals with our own cognitive
development, the knowledge about it and its conscious promotion. Meta-cognition
(and also theory of perception in general) helps to differentiate inner and
outer proceedings and realities.
Jaynes
for example has the theory, that human consciousness came into being only about
1000 b.C.. Before that time the hallucinatory processes of the right half of the
brain were interpreted from the left half as divine message. Varela, Thompson
and Rosch add newer insights gained in observing the experiences in meditation
of Buddhist monks.
Those
five ways of observing, perceiving
and arguing can be easily completed by others, for example one, which deals with
emotions in a way, that they can be understood, expressed in words and
contextually taken into consideration –which would and should be a way of
aesthetic perception. Altogether they should help to gain better patterns of
problem solving, argumentation, judging and hopefully ability for result
consensus and also to develop the Ego positively in the sense of higher self knowledge and self determination. This would help for
better sketches of identity in a world of growing complexity and plurality. Here
skills and education go hand in hand, since human activity and receptivity is
always multi- dimensional in developing cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, social
and practical and technical skills – i.e. the new insights of natural science
will inevitably shape our aesthetic perseptions etc.[1]
II
Logology and Religion: The Metalinguistic Dimension of Language and Communication
as Means to Rescue Ethics and Spirituality
Coming
from scepticism, the theory of language as logology is one meta-theory in
philosophy, where science, religion and art can start innovative and creative
dialogue. We started this essay with new concepts of language and perception as
one product of new scientific insights and insights into scientific methodology
in modern 20th century science. Burke’s logology certainly is an
early effort to deal with the fifth thought form of meta-cognition in the
discipline of philosophy and linguistics.
Let
us therefore now ask, how new insights in the philosophy of language and
linguistics - and later aesthetics - can be made fruitful for theology,
spirituality and ethics. How does the meta-linguistic dimension of language and
communication influence the theological concept of person and consciousness?
In
the intellectual context of structuralist writing Kenneth Burke was fascinated
by language inasmuch as it makes the human species as one ”endowed by
mutation” the only one able to comment on itself. This ”second-level”
dimension which allows words about words and symbols about symbols makes
possible the development of human personality as we know it. The pattern of
complicated symbol systems about other symbols, Burke sees indicated in
Aristotle’s definition of God as ”thought of thought” or in Hegel’s
dialectics of ”self-consciousness”
(going still into a direction to be criticised by process thought for it’s
dualism between God and creation and being still rather close to the second
thought form of dialectics and idealism). This ability to comment on a situation
or to comment on comments is truly human. Some higher primates and cybernetic
machines seemingly can refer to their own plans as well, but they never can
appreciate the concept and self-consciously participate in an Aristotelian
divine or Hegelian dialectic. Words about words in this sense (not just
explanatory statements in general, but words used systematically to chart the
general principles of word use) Burke calls ”logology”. Later Burke
explained the forms and purposes of a meta-linguistic aspect of (for example
religious) language as ”language as symbolic action” as these give away
their own secrets. ”...the movement of language becomes the primary reality:
communication as the exchange of word centres; words coming together at each
nexus to form patterns; the patterns interacting, structurally modifying each
other as they clash, testing their bonds, then eventually disintegrating into
units that will later recombine in new patterns at new loci – a veritable
verbal swirl that, at points, folds back onto itself, producing an awareness of
its own dynamics.”(Carter, page 3) Indeed their could be many logologies
stressing different rules of the game of words, but in a strict sense for Burke,
it means "words about words as these reveal their own moral obsession”.
So in his return to the issue of surrogate victims (in the Judeo-Christian
tradition) and in his theory of the ”ubiquitous scapegoat" he is
similar to theories of Eliade and René Girard in their broaching the subject of
ritual violence (but this would be another article).
In
many instances –and I have to leave out the concrete examples here for the
sake of paper length- Burke discovers linguisticality masquerading as
spirituality. The realms of language and spirit are analogous and Burke never
comes to the conclusion, that ”the show has no meaning” (page 10).
”First, Burke isolates the logological dimension from the expressive or the
persuasive or the referential or the poetic to remind us that our world is
primarily linguistic.” (page 10). So if nothing else, logology reminds us,
that, though we act with many different motives, we cannot escape from words.
”Burke is structuralist in his emphasis on the semiotic character of these dynamics.
[...] Our reality, to paraphrase Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, is a ‘linguistic
construction’” (page 10)
Long
before Derrida and de Man became read, Burke made a point, that linguistic
reality has neither firm foundation nor essence. ”Our symbolic landscape is
not so much a realm of literal truths or of simple one-to-one correspondences
between clearly defined terms and clearly demarcated objects as an insubstantial
realm of metaphor, of what Burke calls ‘analogical extension’.” (page 10)
He is deconstructionist in his focus on the figurative or literary nature of
our linguistic reality and his emphasis on the unstable character of these
dynamics, but not in his assumption of dramatic presence. The narratives with
which we frame our lives are ethically charged. The above mentioned ”scapegoat
mechanism” is a linguistic mechanism serving as the overall category for human
relations, that language reveals, even if blind to its own insights, in its
metalinguistic or logological dimensions. The biblical dialectics between sin
and obedience, love and punishment searches finally for a perfect scapegoat as
an end of the others line: the final mediatory principle is the Son’s
crucifixion and resurrection. Other similar stories/”plays” are found in
different religions/cultures. ”Eliade begins with the rise of religion, which
he discusses as an encounter with sacred mystery, out of which meaning is formed
and order established. Primitive men and women confront the enigma that all life
risks death and that evil is enmeshed with good. For Eliade, the essence of the
human is a religious courage in the face of these existential contradictions,
a courage which finds expression in myth, symbol, and ritual [art, we may add,
knowing, that early art had its roots in religion as well], including human
sacrifice.” (page 13) The connected rites are of human/cultural choice,
mythology or theology more than nature or instinct. For Girard religion rises
with an encounter with finite ressources: from possessive mimesis the process
goes to conflictual mimesis. The origins of violence and (ritual) killing are
forgotten; what remains are the warring ”doubles”, pairs of antagonists
locked in mortal combat. ”In a moment of paroxysm, all blame some more or less
innocent party for their own troubles and then sacrifice him, her or it.”
(page 14) The new world order and the new laws for it will be erected on these
deads’ graves and the world will deify them. ”For Girard, the essence of
the human is this paradox of sanctions, a concoction of legal thou-shalt-not’s
that maintain order and of ritualistic thou-shalt’s that administer
homeopathic doses of a return to chaos.” (page 14) This is structuralist in
stressing the transindividual nature of the cultural pattern. Religion for
Girard, who is here much more final then Burke, is nothing else but this immense
effort to keep the peace. ”For Girard, the scapegoat precedes the law. For
Burke, the law precedes the scapegoat. [...] At the very least, both try to
explain why the more empirical Eliade unearths, when he surveys the history of
religions, so much sacred violence.” (page 15)
Burke’
s work can help us to isolate the foundational violence, in order to appreciate
what is still valid in religion – often hidden. He is deconstructionist in his
assumption that a disruptive energy constantly bursts into the world, but on the
other hand he states, that these bursts can be given a more constructive
direction at the locus of the person. Burke does not completely decenter the
self. It has no firm foundation or any substance and is a product of the verbal
swirl, undergoing transformations all the time made possible by the symbolic
resources of language. Nevertheless it is an unique nexus of experience and can
attain an understanding of its own dynamics. ”A place where language folds
onto itself, the self can face its own moral obsessions.” (page 16) The self
can act to reverse its own dangerous trends. Language itself furnishes some of
the absurd theatre of human emotion, and though we cannot break from the circle
of language, we are responsible for our freedom and can choose our words more
carefully and form our narratives more towards love.
It
is a plea as pessimistic as realistic; taking serious the sceptical approaches
towards ethics and any form of religion in late modern times; trying to avoid
any essentialism and nevertheless, with the help of what he calls ”logology”,
using the specific human capacity of reflecting ones ability to reflect, of
talking about language and its misuse and influence and shaping our perception
of reality up to our very acting, in order to step by step learning to learn
from language (language of art and language of faith etc.) a better behaviour
for the sake of individuals and community – maybe even for the sake of that
loving reality which transcends our human reality, but therefore all the more so
transcends language and words – shows itself from time to time in the beauty
of paradoxes and poetry/art.[2]
There
are no transcultural norms to define art within history of religion. However,
accepting for the time being as working hypothesis, God in a Christian sense as
unmoveable and moved/suffering at the same time, we can take ”functional”
and ”magic” as significantly global iconographic features. It’s divine
presence makes the work of art at the same time a ”fascinans” and a ”tremendum”.
Then art is perceived in the sense of a mythical act, in which the powers of the
”essence of primordial time” are to be reactivated. Ancient Greek art for
example, understood in it’s iconography, is imitation of nature in as far as
it tries to grasp nature’s true substance. The artist can understand the
latter, because the divine Spirit runs through cosmos as well as through the
artist and through the viewer of art, because God and human beings are
substantially related. Seen from this point of view it is clear, that not always
those times without images were the culmination points of history of religion.
Although
this rather religious and essentialist world view is not shared today neither by
theologians nor by artists and philosophers, we learn from these descriptions,
that from early times and in almost every culture history of art and religion
are inseparably connected. As far as the 19th century is concerned,
we are confronted with a dogmatic and ideological misunderstanding, that this is
the century of the ”loss of the centre” (the loss of God). It is argued,
that the reason for this loss is the extreme individualism of our period of
history. Nevertheless faith itself has an irreversibly individualistic
structure, which is the presupposition of the communicability of religion
against modernism’s horizon. The second, morally dualistic misunderstanding is
the presupposition, that there is a wide gap between transcendence and religion
on the one hand and worldly piety which affirms being on this world’s side and
transfigures sensual beauty. But even early romantic ages knew the general in
the specific, which is structurally comparable to the principle of incarnation
as known in many religions, especially in Christianity and is nowadays, for
example in process thought, interpreted in non essentialist, cosmological and/or
historic way.
Even
more misunderstandings arose in the realm of painting through historic
speculations (like Hegel’s theory of the end of art and Comte’s theory of
the end of the theological age for example). The argument is, that from now on
art reproduces experienced reality and this relieves it of it’s character of
revelation. New symbols for God –for God incarnate especially- are faded out.
Sociological
misunderstandings play off against each other high and trivial art and
techniques of reproduction. The sacral romanticism of the school of Nazarenes
for example is either valued too highly or misused for ”indicating” the lack
of the religious theme from 1820-1840 in other schools. But we do have for sure
sacral art on an equally high level represented by avant-garde artists like
Delacroix, Cézanne, Liebermann, van Gogh and the Moderns since Expressionism,
and also a broad range of so-called ”trivial art” dealing with religious
questions and themes.
In
the 1850ies impressionism is taking over the leading role in ”religious art”
and from 1850-1870 this is the case
for critical and middle class realism.
The
political domestication finally of critique and of the ugly leads to a new
idealism at the end of the 19th century. Later, the new symbolism,
art nouveau, shows a religiosity which has it’s sources in Goethe’s oeuvre.
Expressionism and abstract painting remember early romanticism and suggest a new
convergence of art and religion in the 20ies century.
In
philosophy art can be seen as the sensual appearance of the idea –and overcome
in time finally- (Hegel), as the art of the principle of Dionysos in contrary to
the crucifixion (Nietzsche) or art is seen as worldly religion – just to name
a few examples.
At
the end of classical modernism in Heidegger’s theory of art (i.e. aesthetics)
modern times is seen as time of mere worldviews and the claim to represent a
necessary development is questioned as a point of view, which only takes from
reality what makes up it’s reproducible part. World becomes an image; world
becomes available. The ”thing” in art and especially plastic art for
Heidegger stands against the conception of an available world – as that which
is closest, it withdraws (i.e. apophatically fragments) itself. And the other
experience of the thing turns up, when seeing itself transforms itself; ceases
to be a seeing of fixation. (In this sense, plastic art and sculpture are good
examples: they are arts of the invisible and need emptiness as music needs
silence.)
Unfortunately
middle class churches often follow the above mentioned misunderstandings and
misjudge pilot projects of religious and art developments. Most of the latter
therefore arise aside and in opposition to church institutions. Methodologically
however it can be argued, that every piece of art, because of it’s sign syntax
and internal structure can and should be perceived in the field of aesthetic and
theological horizons. One has to recognise of course the complexity of the sign
ensemble and it’s unites and structures. But then, the game of form, content,
referee and interpreter has to be and can be recognised in an aesthetically and
theologically appropriate way. Works of art are not religious in the sense of an
a priori system. On the other hand, the religiosity of a work of art cannot be
denied through aesthetic principles as long as those do not supply a sufficient
explanation of the conception of religion and the conception of transcendence.
If
we follow Tillich’s definition of religion as experience of the absolute, as
experience of ultimate reality because of the experience of ultimate
nothingness, then art in the sense of a transformation of images comes also
close to reformation and the prohibition of images in the Hebrew Bible:
Structurally it comes close to the cross, following God’s incarnation and so
crossing through death itself and transforming human finiteness. (From this
point of view we come to also understand better the religiosity of
expressionism, faith mystics of abstract art, religious metaphysics in
surrealism, prophetic-social realism, religious contemplation in new object art,
search for myths and naive piety and also religious ritual in action art etc.)
Ontological
systems with their determination of substance, when they want to explain the
artistic cosmos, often miss that character of art which aims at autonomy from
systems like spirituality claims freedom from all religious institutions. Here
art is only an answer, not a statement in itself. Models of compensation or of
correlation try to built up a bracket between theory and praxis and so unite
historical development, divine transcendence and psychic reality. There is also
a worldly interpretation of religious language (Dorothee Soelle) to be seen as
concretised compensation of the desire for the absolute (the ”perfect”) on
the level of experience. Finally: the meaning of hermeneutic categories
and linguistic entities/units (Bultmann) show texts as relational texture
of elements of meaning and the structural activity of their production before
any intentional and affective operation. Not to forget the cathartic function of
art.[3]
On
the other hand, as Nietzsche put it, idealism does not get out of the trap, that
interpretation/hermeneutics/understanding as a process always aims at
understanding oneself better, being enriched by the encounter with the Other.
Reflexivity has it, that norms are constituted by the interpreter, even if the
Otherness of the Other is made a point. This is especially true for Habermas: he
fails to let the Other be the Other and does not take its context seriously
enough. Instead he brings in the Other into his own world of symbols and complex
life-world. In doing so he universalises his own context and looses the claim
for universality. Gadamer is not free from this reflexivity either, but to my
point of view his reflexivity (and finally also Habermas’ ”Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns”) can be interpreted in the late modern sense of
self-reference – as is the case for Burkes logology: therefore it is very
important for both of them, that to act means to change oneself (in theology,
influenced by Heidegger, it meant to decide). Understanding finds its goal in
acting, acting leads to new understanding - ”of oneself” we should add
again, more then of the Other.
This
becomes different again in the situation of ritual/sacramental event, since in
the event of the Transcendent Reality –from beyond space and time into space
and time- the subject-object-dichotomy is overcome to a certain extent at least
– as is the dualism between Self and Other.
The
dialogue between art and religion, in front of the above described background,
can be seen as one representative dialogue between what ultimately concerns us
aesthetically and spiritually – and so as bridge building between art and
religion. The silence as incarnational ground of music, the void as
incarnational ground of art and the cross as incarnational ground of human
beings becoming divine (or nothingness as incarnational means of beings becoming
Buddha) are only variations of the ultimate divine reality encompassing the
world – the world of art and religion- and experienced in the rituals of
religion and play.
IV
How Spirituality and Play Get Together – How Art Can Lead to a Spiritual
Existence
Let us now in more detail discuss the question how theatre and ritual, i.e. art and the sacramental and ritual aspect of spirituality go together.
In
any case it is rather obvious, that modern and late modern theatre has religious
aspects. When modern producers use religious symbols and contents, they signal a
typical phenomenon of 20th and 21st century theatre. The
”Aristotelian dramaturgy” aims at ”katharsis” through the primarily
positive aspects of fear and compassion as is due to the antique understanding
of fate. Knowledge is possible, not change of the situation. But modern theatre,
like religion, starts from claiming the possibility of change – of structures,
or, as very impressing in Barlach’s theatre plays for example, of persons.
Even when –as logology in the philosophy of Burke- theatre shows the rather
pessimistic situation of modern anonymity, there is from time to time something
utopian one could call ”hoping against what is before one’s eyes”.
If
we therefore take for granted the possibility of a theatrical play as a
therapeutic process, the rediscovery of this staging of human worlds and counter
worlds is to be seen very close to the rediscovery of myth and ritual (cf.
Schopenhauer’s, Nietzsche’s und Heidegger’s discussion of Meister
Eckart’s mystic). Art and theatre, but also religion and myth are to be
understood as a reflection of our own understanding of and suffering from world
and it’s finitude. The meaning of spirituality in our today’s form of life
often is silenced to death. Nevertheless more and more people show a great
yearning to rediscover exactly this playful art of theatre and religious rituals
for their life and deeds as the only form of expressing and
experiencing/perceiving the paradox truth of God’s incarnation/the
Transcendent. This is clearly expressed by the rediscovery of the playful
element in liturgy and theology on the one hand and through the rediscovery and
regain of ritual and myth for theatre on the other. It is now our task to
discover and think through anew the connection between spirituality and body,
between word and form, not only for theatre pedagogy, but also within Protestant
Theology. A theology, which has lost it’s spiritual dimension, is in all cases
well advised, to recollect an understanding of God, which understands God as
creator also of our corporal being and God’s Son and the incarnation of God
into humanity as motivator for all ethical deeds, all beauty and all faith. If
we believe into incarnation, senses are as divine as is reason and emotion, up
to a point, where we could speak about erotic as sacrament for example.
Playfully we can experience life and death no longer as contradictory, love and
emptiness and profane and sacred as complementary – as for example in Buddhism
and in the idea of maya’s creational play in the beginning in Hinduism.
In
a world, in which the relation of the own and the Other is broken up always anew
and every day, religion or theology and theatre at the same time, have to think
about the fact, that especially in Western societies there lies a great interest
in the ideal of Egolessness, whereas in China, after a phase of Confucianism and
then communism, individuality and subjectivity are celebrated totally new and in
an individual manner: seen globally there is a correlation between subjective
and collective structures – and in art as well as in spirituality the search
starts with senses, mind and emotion.
Then
another interesting question is, in how far mystical/spiritual experience can be
compared with artists’ body exercises. And whether we start from singing as
essence of the aesthetically bodiless, or whether we –as Pnina Bausch for
example- are not interested, how human beings move, but what they
move, or whether we take body work as starting point of all intellectual work:
in all cases it holds true, that the body necessarily has to be seen as bearer
of reason (and spirit) and therefore an absolute separation is not possible.
Hermeneutically said, the body is the bearer of our ideas and emotions, in fact
the bearer of our faith and art.
Since
hundreds of years especially the theatre insists on this ”incarnational
function” of the unity of body and spirit and, in doing so, has emancipated
itself from literature. The visitors are (in most cases) no longer just
spectators, but present. If we try to understand the poets as translators
of God, then for sure theatre is -beyond the crisis of the metaphysical- still
the seesaw place or in the best sense of the word the ”playground” of
God’s incarnation (and this not meant in a purely Christian sense).
Therefore
as a conclusion we dare the thesis, that spiritual, ethic and aesthetic
authenticity depend especially on the playful and staged (incarnational)
potential. This playful potential enriches our language and discourse (with
it’s cultural boundaries). It overcomes the dualism of obscene and holy, body
and soul, human and divine. Liberation and salvation is possible in the playful
”Now” of theatre (and of poetics). But it is a salvation in the realm of the
provisional – the latter also better suitable for theological apophatic
reflection. We are passers by in the playful process of liturgy, ritual and
theatre. We learn, to overcome the trench between taking ourselves back and
authenticity several times daily. If we know since Wittgenstein, that we do not
know anything at all, then it is the noblest task for the players, to take
position for the moment, aesthetically and ethically –and even faithfully- and
in doing so, enable humans to be capable of decisions and life again. To my
opinion, a newly understood theology of the cross can do a lot for the mutual
understanding, paradoxically stating and ”singing about” the truth, that
holy and profane, time and space, mortal and rescued are not the same but at the
same time unseparable.
Maybe
Jesus did not play theatre, but he –if we may say so- set on stage himself and
the Reign of God, where he lacked words, to express God literally and even
poetically. And so on the other hand sacredness can happen in the theatrical. If
by the veracity and authenticity of this prelude cognitive perception of truth
can be set aside for a moment, also here profane and holy are meeting, erotic
becomes a sacrament in the not yet ”performing” the unspeakable, which we
then may perceive by aesthetic and spiritual intuition.
The
thing (the object of art) stands as much against the availability of the world
as does God incarnate stand against the availability of the cross. A common
ethics therefore starts with accepting the Others truth as far as it is a truth
incarnate in religion or in art. There is no possibility to judge between
religious confessions (since we do not confess objects but reality itself as
divine revelation in it’s deepest ground) or between works of art as better or
worse in terms of expressing final reality in finite expressions. If we then
become skilful in enduring diversity seen from the revelatory background of
it’s unity in the Divine Beyond, we learn how to, anew and newly
born, come back to world in it’s worldliness and sinfulness and develop
means, methods and ways to also act together for the sake of peace, justice and
integrity of creation. In other words: ethics becomes art and religion itself
and therefore no longer is a heavy law imposed on moral beings who, as a
minority, strive hard for a better world: ethics is now founded in spirituality
and art on a global level without being uniformed.
Let us go back now once more from the visual to the audible, from art to poetry and literature, to the (W)word in its spiritual and aesthetic and, following from both, liberating (ethical) meaning.
That poetry expresses a certain form of truth has never been denied by poets themselves, as theologians agree that in spirituality/in faith and the deed that follow we can find an expression of a divine ultimate truth - even when poets tried to develop a syntax free of the use of prose, a symbolic/sign language, a language of images not dependent on the laws of logic argumentation or a diction which is defined more by acoustic values then by semantic necessities (as Baudelaire or Mallarmé did contrary to classic poetry and its goal to mediate a thought for our understanding). But this truth can be a one to one sign – describing reality as it is or at least coming to it as close as possible, or it can be a symbol or even a description by the help of above mentioned fuzzy logic.
Religion and art are historically close and systematically connected through the image/picture as symbol, as sign for something else, which refers to the Holy, the Divine, the Transcendent in any case. Of course since the age of Renaissance art and religion became counter-players – both as founders of sense. Whereas Plato’s verdict, that artists deal with the senses and miss the truth, art is mimesis and therefore only appearance, is easier to deny for poetry, since it is closer to reflection, to language as that which makes us human altogether, we should be careful in all too fast neglecting fine arts and theatre, since we learned, that the ritualised experience of the Transcendent happens in play and especially in play. From here we have to critically approach classic and (late) modern avantgarde’s statement, that in order to re-construct the importance of art for our society we have to let go all mimesis. The worst thing to do would be to use art as instrument of mission, instead of watching the independence of theology and art and profit from their mutual enrichment in searching the truth and the Transcendent.
Again: Kant was the first to declare, that aesthetic phenomena and art cannot be defined through objects, but only through the conditions of perception and those of the production of art. Besides reacting towards reality theoretically and practically, there is an aesthetic reaction referring to our senses and emotion, but also to our intellect – this Kant calls ”Reflexionsgeschmack” (taste of reflection). To sense an aesthetically fitting figure for example is sensing something in freedom, in the freedom of a play and not deduct it from concepts. Art is the effort to ”make” the aesthetic. The paradox is, that the artist wants to make something which only ”luckily happens” (succeeds). There is no final theory about it. We can understand a lot in art and from art, but understanding is not the only aspect of it. One more important aspect of it is, that art is ”method out of freedom”, nothing which luckily happens out of my power or Other-power. Therefore art is never technique, it is a more or less secularised expression of –for example- the grace of the Transcendent.[4]
I
wanted to show how on the one hand, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with
religions in general is a necessary pre-requisition for a common ethics and
aesthetics –for understanding the Others ethics and aesthetics at least- and
on the other hand show, how art can lead –and maybe is the best starting point
for- spiritual experiences. Moreover I hope, it became clear, how art and
spirituality both enrich each other in searching for a perception of reality,
which ”knows” about the Transcendent, in which all reality has it’s root
and from where therefore comes hope for a common ethics in a time of growing
globalisation.
Finally,
with the help of the third and forth thought form, the complementary and
graduating thought form, it can be showed, how –in a time of complexity and
search for sense and truth- ethic, aesthetics and spirituality can be shared
even when we do not agree on the other’s concept of it in detail, since we at
least share the common paradoxical yearning of playing the worlds game to it’s
self-fulfilling and at the same time self-transcending end.
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[2]
*the
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[3] *TRE XX, Artikel ”Kunst und Religion” I-IX, Seite 243-336: Berlin-New York 1990
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